Website terms of use

This website, novadatech.com, is operated by Novada Tech, Novada Tech Pty Ltd, ABN 90 665 134 921, of Suite 23, 220 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 (in these terms, “Novada Tech”, “we”, “us” and “our”).

These terms of use (the “Terms”) apply to your access to and use of this website, to any enquiry you send us through it, and to any review call you book through it. “You” means the person or organisation using the website.

By using this website you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree to them, please do not use the website.

We may publish additional terms next to a particular page, form or tool. Where that happens, those additional terms apply in addition to these Terms, and if there is an inconsistency the additional terms apply to that page, form or tool only.

In these Terms, a reference to a statute includes any statute that amends or replaces it, headings are for convenience and do not affect meaning, and “including” and similar words are not words of limitation.

These Terms govern the website. They do not govern the services we provide to clients.

If we work together, the engagement is governed by a separate written services agreement signed by both of us, together with the onboarding documents it refers to. Those documents, and not this page, set out scope, delegated authority, escalation protocols, hours of cover, fees, term, renewal, exit, confidentiality, data handling, insurance and liability for the services.

Where anything in these Terms conflicts with a signed services agreement between you and us, the signed services agreement prevails to the extent of the inconsistency.

Nothing on this website is an offer capable of acceptance. Sending an enquiry, booking a call or speaking with us does not create a services agreement and does not oblige either of us to enter one.

We are not attempting to set out the terms of an engagement on this page. Please do not treat a description on this website as a substitute for reading the services agreement.

We run back office functions for two kinds of business: healthcare practices, and home care, home health and community-based care providers. This website describes four service lines, two for each. They are bought separately and none of them requires another.

Patient Revenue Leakage Audit. For practices. It has two components and examines revenue lost both before and after an appointment. It is a defined piece of work rather than a continuing service. Before the appointment, we review the inquiry, scheduling, cancellation and recall information the practice already produces and identify where appointments are being lost. After it, we review billing, claims, payment and reconciliation records and identify services that were not billed, fees applied incorrectly, claims denied and not reworked, balances outstanding, and discrepancies between what was delivered, what was billed and what was collected. We estimate value where the information supports an estimate, and recommend changes. Any ongoing work afterwards is a separate engagement and applies only where your services agreement says so.

The audit identifies potential overbilling as well as potential underbilling. It is a review of accuracy, compliance and the controls around billing, not an exercise in maximising claims, and we do not recommend billing for a service that was not delivered. We do not select a billing or diagnosis code, decide whether a claim is eligible or payable, or make any decision that turns on clinical judgement. Those remain with the practice and its own qualified billing, compliance and clinical advisers, every correction is authorised by the practice, and an amount we identify is not a confirmed recoverable amount. We do not guarantee that any revenue will be recovered, and we do not represent that an audit will find every billing error.

Patient Scheduling & Retention Continuity. For practices, and the ongoing work that can follow the audit. It covers patient inquiries answered in the practice's name during its office hours, appointments made and changed inside the practice's own practice management software, follow-up of inquiries that did not schedule, short-notice cancellations offered to patients on the practice's own wait list, the practice's own recall list worked at the intervals its practitioners set, and billing administration.

Billing administration means we submit claims, send statements and follow up unpaid balances inside the practice's own systems, against the coding the practice's own practitioners have already determined. We do not select a billing or diagnosis code, set or advise on a fee, decide what is billed or whether a service is payable, or give any person financial advice. The practice remains responsible for the accuracy of what is billed and for every claim submitted in its name. Payment taken in person at the practice is the practice's own and does not reach us.

Recalls and billing are both administered, never originated or determined. We do not decide that a patient needs treatment, we do not add anybody to a recall list, we do not change a recall interval, and no offer, discount or other inducement is placed in a recall message. We make no clinical suitability decision of any kind. Where we write or speak in a practice's name, the practice remains responsible for the content it approves.

We no longer provide recruitment, onboarding or training administration, licensure or credential currency, or payroll administration to healthcare practices. Those service lines are withdrawn and this agreement does not offer them. Payroll administration remains available to care providers only, on the terms set out below.

Scheduling Audit & Efficiency. For care providers. It has two components and is a defined piece of work rather than a continuing service. The first examines how a provider schedules and allocates its workforce: we review scheduling, payroll, overtime, staffing agency, travel and cancellation information the provider already produces, and identify where avoidable cost and operational risk sit. The second examines whether care delivered has been accurately recorded, authorized, billed, reconciled and collected: we review visit records, authorizations, visit verification data, claims, remittances and payment reconciliation and identify visits not billed, care delivered outside an authorization, codes, units or rates applied incorrectly, claims denied or unresolved, balances outstanding, and unreconciled payments. The second component is scoped to the payers the provider actually bills, whose rules are not the same as one another. We estimate impact where the information supports an estimate, and recommend changes. Any ongoing monitoring or claims administration afterwards is a separate engagement and applies only where your services agreement says so.

The audit identifies potential overbilling as well as potential underbilling, and is a review of accuracy, compliance and the controls around billing rather than an exercise in maximizing claims. We do not treat a scheduled visit as automatically billable: a claim requires actual delivery, a valid authorization and supporting documentation. We do not recommend billing for care that was not delivered, and we do not recommend reducing staffing below what a person's needs or a mandated level require.

We do not determine eligibility, we do not select or change a service code, and we do not interpret a payer rule on your behalf. Those remain with the provider and its own qualified billing, compliance and clinical advisers, every correction and resubmission is verified and authorized by the provider, and an amount we identify is not a confirmed recoverable amount. We do not guarantee that any cost will be saved or any revenue recovered, we do not represent that an audit will identify every error, and we provide no statutory or financial audit certification.

Workforce Continuity. For care providers. It builds and maintains the provider's own workforce, and covers recruitment run as a continuing function, screening and credential coordination, onboarding and training administration, workforce visibility and payroll administration. The provider remains the employer of its own caregivers at all times.

Payroll administration, which is available to care providers and not to practices, means we process a payroll run on your cycle, against the hours, rates and entitlements you set, using your own systems and your own funds. We are not the employer, we do not pay any worker as principal, and we do not advise on payroll, tax or employment questions.

A scheduling audit and a patient revenue leakage audit are both operational reviews. Neither is an audit under any statutory, accreditation or payer scheme, neither produces anything that is lodged with any regulator or health plan, and neither is a substitute for legal, payroll, clinical or regulatory advice.

Records we maintain on your behalf are kept for the retention period recorded in your services agreement. The period that binds us is the one written there.

The descriptions on this website are a general summary, written for people deciding whether to speak with us. The scope that binds us is the scope written into your services agreement.

We work alongside your people. We do not replace your front desk or any other role in your practice, and we do not describe our service as doing so.

We act within delegated authority that is documented at onboarding. That document records what we may do, what we may not do, and who we escalate to. We do not act outside it.

We work inside your systems. You remain the system of record for your patient and client information, and you remain the entity responsible for that information under privacy law. Nothing migrates to us and nothing of yours is replaced.

Our coordinators are located in Australia. If your practice is in the United States, that means your patient information is accessed from outside the United States. Our Privacy Policy sets out what that involves and what it is your responsibility to check.

We do not provide clinical services of any kind. We do not triage. We do not assess. We do not give clinical, medical, health, allied health or veterinary advice, and we do not make or contribute to clinical decisions.

Anything clinical, and any emergency, is routed to your own people under an escalation protocol agreed in writing before we take a single call.

Nothing on this website is clinical, medical, veterinary, legal, financial or tax advice, and nothing on it should be relied on as advice of any kind.

Do not use this website, our contact forms, our booking tool or our chat to report an emergency, a safeguarding concern, a reportable incident or a clinical event. Those channels are not monitored for that purpose.

If you are a healthcare clinic, you retain your own obligations under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law as it applies in your state or territory, and under any professional, accreditation or registration standards that apply to your practice.

If you are a covered entity under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, you retain your own obligations under it and under the rules made under it, and under any state health privacy law, professional licensure requirement or accreditation standard that applies to your practice. HIPAA sets a floor and does not displace a state law that protects the individual more.

Where we handle protected health information for you, we do it as your business associate. We sign a business associate agreement before we are given access to anything, and it forms part of your services agreement. We are not a covered entity, we do not bill any health plan, and we hold no protected health information in our own right. We do not describe ourselves as HIPAA certified, because no body certifies compliance with HIPAA.

You remain the employer of your own staff at all times, and you retain your own obligations as an employer, including those under the industrial instruments, wage and hour requirements, retirement or payroll tax arrangements and record keeping rules that apply where you operate. For care providers only, and only where your services agreement says so, we recruit on your behalf, administer the employment lifecycle and process payroll. Novada is not an employer of record, is not a labour supplier, and does not place its own people into your roles.

We process payroll, we do not advise on it. We do not advise on tax treatment, on whether a person is a contractor or an employee, on an employment dispute, or on the interpretation of a regulatory requirement. Where you need that, it goes to your accountant or lawyer, and we will tell you so rather than be drawn.

Our role is back-office administration carried out under delegated authority. In providing the services we do not act as a registered or licensed health practitioner in any jurisdiction, we do not hold ourselves out as one, and we do not assume your obligations. All clinical and professional judgement remains entirely with your licensed practitioners, and we exercise no control over the practice of the profession.

Quality and safeguarding, clinical governance, incident management and reporting, complaints handling, restrictive practices and worker screening remain yours. Where your delegated authority records an administrative step we take in support of one of those processes, we take that step as your agent and to your instructions, and the obligation itself stays with you.

You are responsible for making sure that the delegated authority you give us, and the access you give us to your systems, is lawful and consistent with your own obligations and with your agreements with your patients and clients.

We do not guarantee outcomes. We do not guarantee that an appointment will be scheduled or kept, that a recall list will convert, that a claim will be paid, that an audit will find anything, that a care provider role will be filled or filled by a particular date, or that your revenue will change. An audit may conclude that there is little to recover, and where it does we say so.

Outcomes depend on matters outside our control, including the availability of your practitioners, the decisions of your patients and clients, your own staffing and systems, and the performance of third party software and telecommunications.

Nothing on this website is a guarantee, a warranty, a service level, a response time commitment or an uptime commitment. Any service level or availability commitment we make will be written into your services agreement. If it is not written there, we have not made it.

Descriptions of process, examples and illustrations on this website are general. They are not a representation that you will achieve any particular result.

This clause does not exclude, restrict or modify any right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law or under any other law where that would be unlawful. See clause 14.

You may view, download and print pages of this website for your own internal business purposes.

You must not:

• (a)use the website unlawfully or for an unlawful purpose;
• (b)interfere with, or attempt to interfere with, the security or proper operation of the website;
• (c)scrape, harvest or systematically extract content or contact details from the website;
• (d)use automated means to submit forms or bookings, or to generate traffic;
• (e)impersonate another person or organisation; or
• (f)reproduce, republish, sell or otherwise commercially exploit our content without our written permission.

We aim to keep the website available, current and accurate, but we do not commit to it being available at all times or free of errors, and we may change, suspend or withdraw any part of it. Clause 14 applies to this clause.

We may restrict or block access to the website where your use breaches these Terms, is unlawful, or threatens the security or operation of the website or the use of it by others. Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will tell you why.

You can book a review call through a scheduling tool embedded on this website and operated by a third party, a third party booking platform. Information you submit through that tool is collected and processed by that provider as well as by us, under that provider's own terms and privacy policy as well as ours.

You must give us accurate information, and you must be authorised to provide any information you submit about another person or organisation.

Do not submit patient or client personal information through any form, booking tool or chat on this website, and in particular do not submit health information. Those channels are not set up to receive it. If information of that kind needs to reach us, we will agree a secure channel with you in writing first.

Booking a call is not an application, an engagement or a commitment by either of us, and we may decline or reschedule a call.

If we record a call, we will tell you at the time, and you may ask us not to.

If you contact us, you agree that we may reply using the channel you used and the contact details you gave us.

Where you consent to receive SMS or email updates from us, message frequency varies, and your carrier's standard message and data charges may apply. Carriers are not responsible for delayed or undelivered messages.

You can opt out of our marketing messages at any time by replying STOP to an SMS, using the unsubscribe link in an email, or emailing us at support@novadatech.com.au. We handle commercial electronic messages in accordance with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth).

Opting out of marketing does not stop operational messages we need to send you about services you are already receiving.

How we handle personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms. We are not restating it here.

We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. Where we handle protected health information for a practice in the United States, we do it as that practice's business associate under HIPAA, on the terms of the business associate agreement we sign with it.

For the services, you hold the relationship with your patients and clients, you remain the entity responsible for their information, and our handling of it is governed by your services agreement rather than by these Terms.

If you have a privacy concern, raise it with us first at support@novadatech.com.au. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, or, if the matter concerns protected health information and your practice is in the United States, to the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

We or our licensors own the content of this website, including its text, layout, graphics, photographs, video, code and the arrangement of them, and the templates, checklists, report formats and process documents we use in delivering the services.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, revocable licence to access and view the website for the purposes described in clause 8.1. No other rights are granted.

“Novada”, “Novada Tech”, “Patient Revenue Leakage Audit”, “Patient Scheduling & Retention Continuity”, “Scheduling Audit & Efficiency” and “Workforce Continuity”, together with the former names “Novada Practice Operations”, “The Patient Access Desk”, “The Workforce Desk” and “The Operations Desk”, are used by us as trade marks. You must not use them without our written permission, except to refer to us fairly and accurately.

Ownership of your data, and of material we create for you in the course of the services, is dealt with in your services agreement. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of your data to us, and nothing in these Terms gives us a licence to use your data to train any model.

If you send us an unsolicited suggestion about the website, we may act on it without any obligation to you. We do not claim ownership of anything you already own.

This website links to, and embeds, services operated by others, including the scheduling tool described in clause 9.1 and the analytics and advertising tools described in our Privacy Policy.

We do not control those services and we are not responsible for their content, their terms, their availability or their handling of your information. A link is not an endorsement.

Access to any client portal we make available is governed by your services agreement and by any access terms provided with it.

Non-excludable rights. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, condition, warranty, right or remedy that applies to you under the Australian Consumer Law, being Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), or under any other law, where doing so would be unlawful. Every other part of this clause is read subject to this sub-clause and is limited so far as is necessary to give effect to it.

You may be a consumer even though you are a business. Under the Australian Consumer Law, services can be acquired as a consumer in more than one way. One of them is where the amount paid or payable for the services does not exceed the amount prescribed for that purpose, which has been $100,000 since 1 July 2021. Whether you are a consumer in a particular case is a question of law, and this clause does not decide it.

Limit permitted for business services. Where the law allows us to limit our liability for a failure to comply with a consumer guarantee, and the services are not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use or consumption, our liability for that failure is limited, at our option, to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having the services supplied again. That limit is the one permitted by section 64A of the Australian Consumer Law, and it does not apply where you establish that it would not be fair or reasonable for us to rely on it.

Subject to sub-clauses 14.1 to 14.3 and to the extent the law permits, we are not liable to you for loss arising out of your access to, use of, or inability to use this website, or your reliance on anything published on it.

Subject to sub-clauses 14.1 to 14.3 and to the extent the law permits, neither you nor we are liable to the other under these Terms for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of goodwill, loss of anticipated savings, loss of opportunity, or loss of or corruption of data.

Either party's liability is reduced to the extent that the other party, or a person that other party is responsible for, caused or contributed to the loss.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury, to the extent that liability cannot lawfully be limited.

Liability for the services we supply to clients is dealt with in the services agreement, not in these Terms.

These Terms are a standard form contract. We publish them and you do not negotiate them.

If you are a consumer, or a small business, for the purposes of Part 2-3 of the Australian Consumer Law, the unfair contract terms provisions apply to these Terms. Since 9 November 2023 it has been unlawful, and not merely ineffective, to propose, apply or rely on an unfair term in a standard form consumer or small business contract.

Under the test that has applied since that date, a business is a small business for this purpose if it employs fewer than 100 people, or if its turnover for the previous income year was less than $10 million.

A term that is unfair is void. If a term of these Terms is found to be unfair, it is severed and the rest of these Terms continue to apply.

We have written these Terms to avoid one sided rights. They do not give us a right to vary a signed services agreement on our own, they do not create an automatic renewal without an exit, they do not contain an indemnity that runs only one way, and they do not let us terminate for any reason at all. If you think a term here is unfair, tell us at support@novadatech.com.au and we will look at it.

We may update these Terms. The version published on this page at the time you use the website is the version that applies to that use, and changes do not apply retrospectively.

The date of the current version is shown at the top of this page. Where a change is material we will note it there.

A change to these Terms does not vary a signed services agreement. That agreement can only be varied in the way it says it can be varied.

If you do not agree with an updated version, you can stop using the website. This clause gives us no right to change what you have already agreed or already paid for.

These Terms are governed by the laws in force in Victoria, Australia, and by the Commonwealth laws that apply there.

You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Victoria and of the courts entitled to hear appeals from them.

Nothing in this clause prevents you from taking a matter to a court, tribunal, ombudsman or regulator that has jurisdiction where you are.

If a provision of these Terms is void, unenforceable or unlawful, it is severed and the remaining provisions continue in force.

A failure or delay by either of us in exercising a right under these Terms is not a waiver of that right.

These Terms, and the documents they refer to, are the whole of what is agreed between us about this website. This sub-clause does not limit our responsibility for a statement we have made that is misleading or deceptive.

We may assign or novate these Terms as part of a sale or restructure of our business, and we will tell you if we do. Otherwise neither of us may assign these Terms without the other's consent, which must not be unreasonably withheld.

If something is wrong, please tell us first. Email support@novadatech.com.au. We will acknowledge your complaint and tell you who is handling it.

Notices to us under these Terms must be in writing, by email to the address above or by post to Suite 23, 220 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000.

If we cannot resolve a consumer law matter with you, you can contact the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or the consumer protection agency in your state or territory. For privacy matters, see clause 11.4.